Michael Gray
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
The song appears on Dylan's second album, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, released in May 1963, an album which marks his breakthrough to mainstream success.
With an image of him and Rotolo strolling through Greenwich Village on the cover, the album includes personal ballads such as Don't Think Twice It's Alright, as well as politically charged songs like Masters of War and A Hard Rain's A Gonna Fall, which critique the Cold War and Cuban Missile Crisis.
The resulting recognition leads to a slot at the Newport Folk Festival in Rhode Island, and it's here that he is joined on stage by renowned singer and activist Joan Baez.
With flowing dark hair and a voice Dylan describes as too pretty, Baez often performs barefoot, embodying the free-spirited ethos of the movement.
Though their initial connection was all about the music, by now they are romantically involved, though Rotolo remains on the scene for a while longer.
When he's in love, Dylan's girlfriends find him magnetic and attentive, but he guards his independence closely and is capable of being distant and cutting.
This tension of wanting devotion without feeling that he's being owned runs through both his romances and his songs.
Soon after they appear together at Newport, Baez invites him to join her on tour.
The striking pair take to the stage to sing at a Washington protest in August 1963, where more than 200,000 people have gathered at the Lincoln Memorial, demanding racial equality, economic justice, and an end to segregation.
Though they're certainly a big draw, the event is best known for Martin Luther King Jr.
Yet while the singer sympathizes with the causes of the moment, he rarely marches in the way Baez does.
That summer, his second album sells up to 10,000 copies a week.
The man Baez affectionately calls her little vagabond is fast becoming a star in his own right.
In October 1963, plans are afoot for a solo concert at New York's prestigious Carnegie Hall.
The show sells out, but behind the scenes, trouble is brewing.
Dylan has been weaving elaborate stories for a Newsweek profile, playing up the persona of the traveling bard he's invented for himself, and suggesting he is estranged from his family.
The illusion collapses when his proud parents attend the concert and speak openly to a reporter.
The resulting article exposes the gap between Dylan's constructed troubadour image and his conventional middle-class roots.